Willa
Cather's Prototypes Who Were Recording Artists.
FARRAR.
FREMSTAD. NORDICA. GARDEN. SCHUMANN-HEINK. BORI.
By Doug Boilesen, 2020
Willa Cather loved
opera and was a devoted patron of opera wherever she lived or
travelled. She had friendships with opera stars, understood the
world of opera, knew the challenges of being an artist in a consumer
world and of being a woman artist in male dominated domains, and
wrote multiple stories where a prima donna or an aspirational
artist was the central character.
Six of the opera singing
performers identified by scholars as likely prototypes (1)
for Cather opera related characters made phonograph records and
appeared in phonograph ads.
By appearing in popular
culture magazine ads these prototypes added their celebrity status,
artistic reputations, and the prestige of opera to promote key
phonograph industry themes; namely, that the world of entertainment,
highlighted by opera, was available to anyone, anytime and anyplace.
The stage of the world, it was advertised, could now be in your
own home where you would be more comfortable than in a theatre;
it was more convenient than going to a theatre, no expensive tickets
to buy, unlimited reperotoires, and always the best seat in the
house.
The
promotion of opera by the phonograph industry also had an on-going
subtext that recorded sound should be considered an equivalent
of live music and not a sound-reproducing novelty. "The Victor
Record of Farrar's
voice is just as truly Farrar as Farrar herself."
This page is an
overview of the six Cather prototype artists who have phonograph
connections.
Each artist also
has their own gallery (select from below) with many more examples
of the presence of each in popular culture, as prima donnas and
promoters of the phonograph and recorded sound.
Geraldine
Farrar (one of the prototypes for Kitty Ayrshire in
Scandal and A Gold Slipper and interviewed by
Cather for her article Three American Singers).
Lillian
Nordica (prototype for Cressida Garnet in The Diamond
Mine).
Mary
Garden (prototype for Eden Bower in Coming, Aphrodite!
and one of the prototypes for Kitty Ayrshire in Scandal).
Olive
Fremstad (prototype for Thea Kronborg in The Song
of the Lark and interviewed by Cather for her article Three
American Singers).
Ernestine
Schumann-Heink (prototype
for "soprano soloist" in Paul’s Case).
Lucrezia
Bori (prototype for "Spanish woman" in Scandal).
Cather's first collection
of short stories (The Troll Garden, 1905) were written
in the early years of the phonograph entering the home.
In the following decade,
when Cather was writing many of her opera and aspirational artist
stories e.g., The Song of the Lark (1915) and the publication
of her collection of short stories Youth and Bright Medusa
(1920), the phonograph became the definitive home entertainer.
Electrical recordings were introduced in 1925 and the prevalence
of radio in the 1930's would further alter how the public experienced
sound.
The evolution of the
phonograph from 1900 to 1920 included advertisements made by six
of Cather's opera prototypes which reveal aspects of the new century's
consumerism and themes of "live" versus recorded music,
the "Stage
of the World' entering homes and the advertising power of
prima donnas.
E.T. Paull - Sheet
music published by E.T. Paull Music Co., New York, 1900. (Sheet
Music from University of Indiana).
In promoting opera
The Victor Talking Machine Company led the way with its advertising
campaigns featuring opera, Caruso and "the greatest artists
of the world." Farrar, Schumann-Heink and Bori would all
record for Victor. Schumann-Heink also did five records for Columbia.
Columbia was a strong
competitor and promoted the exclusivity of their 'greatest artists
of the world" whenever they could. Nordica, Garden and Fremstad
would be featured Columbia artists. (3)
Edison didn't have
as many of the first-tier opera stars and seems to have been more
interested in advertising the technical accuracy of his phonograph
than promoting world-renowned artists. Even the repertory of those
Edison celebrity artists have been described as "confined
to hackneyed operatic arias and quasi-popular encore pieces"(3A).
Perhaps most revealing, the Edison business approach regarding
these recordings was said to have been "the flat statement
that the reproduction of operatic and symphonic music did not
represent a sound commercial proposition -- in America."
(3B)
On the other hand Edison
was making movies and a 1914 article in The Talking Machine
World stated that Edison was working every day to improve
the "Talkie-Movies" and opera recording were important
to him.
"Opera
and drama for the poor workingman and his family for a nickel
is what we should have, and what we eventually will have,"
Mr. Edison said.
Edison's phonographs
were prevalent in popular culture for over three decades and some
of his phonograph and record ads were for his 'grand opera' and
the 'famous artists' that he did
recruit. Mary Garden did record
three records for Edison in 1905 and Lucrezia Bori made thirty
recordings for Edison between 1910 and 1913.
(3)
Remarkably, recordings
were made between 1900 and 1903 by the Metropolitan Opera House's
librarian Lionel Mapleson using an Edison "Home" Phonograph
he purchased for $30.00. One hundred and twenty-six cylinders
made by Mapleson are known to have survived with Ernestine Schumann-Heink
and Lillian Nordica among those recorded voices.
Edison Home Model
A 1900.
Soprano Lillian Nordica,
with contralto Ernestine Schumann-Heink and tenor Georg Anthes
can be heard
HERE from the 'live" performance
originally captured on cylinder by Mapleson at the Metropolitan
on Monday evening, February 9, 1903.
The re-recording onto
78 rpm records from these cylinders was started in 1937 by William
H. Seltsam. For that story see "The
Mapleson Cylinders that Lived in Bridgeport: William H. Seltsam,
Lionel Mapleson, and Ghosts of the Golden Met" by Professor
Jeffrey Johnson, 2018.
Johnson nicely summarizes
the meaning of the records. "These recordings are audio séances;
they can summon ghosts."
